


Ellipses

by moriturism



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Stream of Consciousness, my farewell to haikyuu
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-19
Updated: 2020-07-19
Packaged: 2021-03-04 18:20:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 547
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25370779
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/moriturism/pseuds/moriturism
Summary: My love letter to Haikyuu, a stream of consciousness written through the voice of the first character I ever saw myself in, about love, passion, and moving on. Thank you Ennoshita Chikara, and thank you Furudate for this amazing, wonderful series.
Comments: 5
Kudos: 24





	Ellipses

Passion is defined as a “strong and barely controllable emotion.”

Ennoshita’s first encounter with passion is not with the overwhelming aspect and more the lack of it.

He is in his first year of high school, in love with nothing, when he learns that passion applies to  _ all _ situations.

His classmates are passionate about making it to lunch on time, Ryuu is, and will always be, passionate about Kiyoko, Hisashi is passionate about skipping practice when he’s tired, Yuu is passionate about volleyball.

His coach, their new-old coach, is passionate about making his life a living hell.

Ennoshita learns, quickly, that passion comes in many forms, and not all are benevolent. In time, he dredges the view of the gym doors, the crappy posters on the clubroom wall, the ache of his sore muscles. His classmates bid him goodbye as he heads towards practice, and his mouth feels dry with regret.

So he stops.

It’s a dramatic decision, especially for a person who has always simply let the world push him like a piece of driftwood afloat at sea, but he wouldn’t say it’s passionate. Dispassionate, maybe.

He goes home, instead, feigning sickness and hiding tiredness. Ennoshita feels no ‘overwhelming emotion’ at the decision, just a pang of slow listless guilt that rises in him. It is quiet the first day. Forte on the fifth. He doesn’t understand this dread as passion, either. “Passionless” seems all the better description.

It’s on this sixth day that Ennoshita realizes he doesn’t know much about passion.

Yet, he still knows the feeling of the volleyball against his fingers will always be smooth. The electricity of a good spike or a risky save will always make his heart stop, restart, beat again. He knows the feeling of breathing in slowly, holding his breath, and then exhaling again as he lets worries past through him.

Volleyball will be volleyball, whether it is today, tomorrow, or seventy years from now.

Whether he is on the court or not, he will always love volleyball like the corner store he went to after school every day or the familiarity of a childhood friend.

It’s never been about passion, really.

On the fifth day, he returns to a gym that feels more like home than he had ever realized before.

He is welcomed with open arms, wide smiles, and guilt that still drags down his chest at the best of times.

Trust, Ennoshita recalls, is defined as the firm belief in the reliability, truth, ability, or strength of someone or something.

Ennoshita trusts in certain certainties, trust in his teammates, trust in the greetings of “good morning captain!” whenever he walks into the gym.

He trusts he can leave, breathe, learn what it means to love regardless of passion, to love under control, and the gym will still be the same when he returns weather it is today, tomorrow or seventy years from now.

Ennoshita enters Karasuno highschool a dispassionate teenager. He leaves the captain of the volleyball team, a man thoroughly in love with the past three years and the next eight-year to come.

He knows, in his mind, that he has grown and changed, but now as he looks back, trusting he can always return home, he’s not sure any of that really matters.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading :)  
> Ironically, I'm in a writing slump while writing this.  
> I know Haikyuu has meant a lot to me, and to everyone else who has been part of it. I couldn't really capture in one piece everything is has meant to me, and taught me, and I'm not sure I'll ever really be able to put it into words.  
> But it means something, and that's what matters in the end. I've been touched by haikyuu, and I'm sure you have, too. The series ending doesn't take away from any of that.


End file.
